


meanwhile the world goes on

by fictionalfoibles



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 05:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17616581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalfoibles/pseuds/fictionalfoibles
Summary: Nursey's favorite poet dies. It hits him harder than he expects. Luckily his boyfriend can read him like a book.





	meanwhile the world goes on

**Author's Note:**

> Some soft nurseydex, a very self-indulgent fic.
> 
> No archive warnings apply, but very, _very_ obliquely references poetry that would indicate Nursey some suffered abuse growing up. Again it's not really _in_ the fic. Just an overall note of sad Nursey.
> 
> Slightly tweaked from the original version posted on Tumblr. Title and quotes within fic all from Mary Oliver.

Nursey’s still up at Samwell in 2019 for his Masters when he hears his favorite poet, Mary Oliver, has passed. He tries to act chill and also doesn’t want to bother the guys at the Haus so he just goes to the library after classes and basically disassociates while reading. He wants to call Will but he’s currently flying back to the east coast with the rest of the Bruins, coming off a roadie.

Hours later his phone buzzes, it’s Dex saying _I’m home but where are you?_ (“Campus,” Nursey texts. “I figured, but where? I know you’re not at the Haus.” “How did you know?” “Call it a hunch.”) Nursey thinks Dex is back at their apartment, _I’m home, he said_ , but instead Dex double texts a minute later with “nvm I found you” and then taps Nursey’s shoulder. Dex says he figured Nursey would be a little off today if his boyfriend had heard the news about one of his favorite poets. “You knew she was my favorite poet?”

“No,” Dex says, too quickly at Nursey’s widening eyes. “You’ve just been quoting poetry at me since freshman year, not like I didn’t pick up on a few things.” He shrugs. “I was on Twitter today and her name was trending. And I remembered. So.”

Nursey’s curious what exactly Dex remembers. It’s true that Nursey likes to quote poetry all the time. That he often reads intriguing excerpts from books and poems aloud with a soft smile of wonder. He read “Coming Home” from his battered copy of _Dream Work_ the night they moved into their apartment. Right after they christened the bed Nursey pulled the yellowing chapbook off the nightstand and read “ _…the narrow streets, the houses, / the past, the future, / the doorway that belongs / to you and me_ ,” and Dex, moved by the words, or perhaps just eager to shut him up, pulled him back into the mess of untucked sheets for another round.

Later, at home, after Dex makes them dinner, just some pasta and red sauce because it’s his cheat day, Nursey comes out from his study where he’s been cloistered since they got home. While they eat Dex tries and fails to make small talk. Their usual banter is absent, mostly because Nursey isn’t feeling talky tonight and Dex isn’t great at being delicate when things (read: Nursey) are frustrating him. So instead, Dex keeps to safe topics, preventing unnecessary fireworks from sparking. Tries to initiate some innocuous conversation with his boyfriend. It doesn’t really take, and too soon Dex point-blank asks Nursey why this is hitting him so hard.

Nursey shrugs, pokes at his food while poetry filters through his conscious mind, unimpeded.

_You do not have to be good._

“I don’t know.”

_You do not have to walk on your knees_  
_for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting._

“I’ll be over it tomorrow. It just…sucks I guess.”

_You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves._

Dex looks like he’s just tasted something sour. “You know you don’t have to like, pretend to be okay, Der.” He adds, softer. “Not with me.”

Nursey looks up at Dex. He forgets, sometimes, like a slip in normal consciousness, that this is real. He and Dex. Their lives together.

_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

Nursey shrugs again. “Her poetry moved me. At a time I wasn’t sure anything would. At least not in a positive way. I don’t know. It’s bittersweet. I’m remembering times when things weren’t so good, and all I had were books. And her voice sounded like a friend I wanted to have? I don’t know.”

Dex looks at him a moment, trying to catch his eyes, and doesn’t say anything about how Nursey liberally uses ‘I don’t know’ when he’s stressed and trying to act chill and when he does, in fact, _know_. Doesn’t let on that it drives him crazy when Nursey does that (of course Nursey knows that already, it’s the tinder to many an argument), or mention just how much Nursey has abused the phrase this evening alone. Doesn’t say how talking to him sometimes ‘is like pulling teeth.’ Nursey’s heard that one before, too. It’s one of Dex’s go-to phrases whenever he’s upset with Nursey. When Nursey really wants to get under his skin, he waves off Dex’s criticisms because the way they exit the redhead’s mouth is “so cliche, Poindexter, really.”

Dex just…waits.

But Nursey doesn’t elaborate further, doesn’t comment on the overlap of personal histories that might have endeared him to the writer. How he could see his own life there, like an imperfect mirror of what was. What could be.

He definitely doesn’t mention particular poems that still slam into him, waking familiar nightmares. Both a good and bad ache. Doesn’t mention how he used to cry with relief sometimes, the little poems like prayers answered when religion itself had failed him: all that cosmic god dust and no absolution. No relief. Only through poetry could he break and heal and come back stronger like a stubborn bone.

Dex takes one of Nurse’s hands across the table, covering it. “You know what I read?”

“You _read_?” Nursey quips. Can’t help himself.

“Shut up, asshole, I’m talking,” Dex says, huffing exaggeratedly while stroking the side of Nursey’s hand with his thumb. “I was reading some obit and apparently she was with her partner for like, 40 years, until her partner passed away, fifteen years ago or something. They lived in Provincetown.”

“Yeah?” Nursey says, raising an eyebrow. The information’s only new to one of them, after all, and Nursey’s curious where Dex’s heading with this.

Dex catches his eyes, his answering smile wry. “Sounds a little too good, right?” he says. “But my first thought was still _hey, that’s kind of like us. That could be us_.”

Nursey’s countenance remains unchanged, still a little skeptical and bemused. Outwardly, his body is stone-still. But his traitorous heart begins to pick up pace, sprinting toward something unknown and exciting and dangerous. “You saying you wanna move to P-town, Dexy?” he says coolly. “That’s a hell of a commute.”

Dex drops his head down on his forearm. “It’s like pulling teeth with you…”

Nursey bites his lip, not wanting to open his dumb mouth and possibly ruin…whatever there is to ruin right now.

Dex peeks back up again at Nursey’s answering silence. “I think you know what I’m saying, you’re just being a smartass to rile me up. But you have to know,” he says, straightening and grasping Nursey’s free hand tightly now. “There’s nothing you could do or say to scare me off now. This is real. We’re _real_ , Derek.” Dex says, and something unshakable in his resolve makes Nursey sit up straighter. Though the conversation feels surreal over their lukewarm, barely edible pasta. 

Swallowing down on nothing, Nursey whispers, “Yeah. I think we're real too.”


End file.
